Boring Meetings Suck: Play Improv Warm-up Games To Improve Them & Your Teams

You will be surprised to learn that Improv Teams and Agile Teams have many similarities. The same techniques Improv Teams use to turn a group of random individuals into a powerful Team can be used by Agile Teams to improve Collaboration, Creativity, Communication & Trust. I will challenge your assumptions about meetings and playing games at work. We will play several of these 3 minute games so that you can see how they help each of us become a better team player.

This unique workshop will have attendees out of their seats and on their feet actively practicing the concepts presented during the short lecture, thus proving how warm-up games from the world of Improv will build Great Team Players. Practicing the four essential qualities of a Great Team Player, i.e. Collaboration, Creativity, Communication and Trust, not only shows attendees how they can become a Great Team Player, but also how to train others within their organization. This hands on workshop provides immediately actionable material for participants to use on their first day back to work. Additionally, attendees will see first hand how playing Improv warm-up games create Great Team Players, which can move freely from team to team within their organization.

Outline/structure of the Session

Pre-Introduction - I quickly explain who I am and how I stumbled into Improv and why I want to teach 3 minute games to Agile Teams.

Introduction - I'm going to challenge your assumptions about meetings and playing games at work.

Problems with our meetings - Single person dominates the meeting, we often interrupt each other, someone might not participate at all, we don't build upon each other's ideas, perhaps even tearing them down, and we don't always completely listen to each other.

Improv Teams have solved these same problems. They have done it the same way for the last 50 years, by playing short games together.

What is Improv? Define Improv for those that don't know what I'm referring to.

Explain similarities between our Teams/meetings and Improv. There are 3 that stand out and are surprising.

Explain the differences between our Teams and Improv Teams. This makes the main point that we would be much better off if we treated each other like Improv teammates treat each other. We get there by playing the same games Improv Teams do.

The problems with our meetings and Teams have been solved by Improv Teams. This is done by developing the Improv mindset which encompasses the 4 qualities of Collaboration, Creativity, Communication and Trust.

Explain what a warm-up game is. They go in a different direction every time they are played so they can be repeated. They work great over the phone and we have 60 of them listed on the website.

Play "Yes And..." game. Quotes from the CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo, and Bossypants author Tina Fey. This game uses 3-4 audience members. "Yes And..." teaches us to build upon the ideas of others rather than tearing them down. This is the idea behind all of Improv and an idea that helps Scrum Teams solve complicated business problems together going as a Team where no one individual can go.

Explain why Improv Teams developed warm-up games. Each game improves a different one of these qualities: Collaboration, Creativity, Communication and Trust. This presentation is all about improving those 4 qualities in your Scrum Teams.

Improv Teams achieve these qualities by playing many other warm up games.

Play another game to show how each game develops a different quality in your Scrum Team.

Conclusion - Starting your meetings with a 3 minute game will do for your Teams what they do for Improv Teams. They will built the qualities of Collaboration, Creativity, Communication & Trust into your Scrum Teams. This will enable your Teams to develop the Improv mindset, and this mindset will improve not only your meetings, but your Scrum Teams as well. Thank you!

The above is the first half of the workshop, around 45 minutes.

During the second half of the workshop we will play several games and discuss how they help build great team players!

Learning Outcome

After attending this presentation you will be able to start your Agile meetings with any of the 60 different 3 minute games on our website: http://www.teamfirstdevelopment.com/warm-ups/. These free games all work well over the phone and can be replayed.

Target Audience

Agile team members that are looking to improve their teams by playing a 3 minute game every day.

My presentation contains audience participation and will be engaging. As an Improv player I'm comfortable on stage. At "Agile Portugal 2014" my session received an overall audience rating of 8.26 on a 9 point scale, reference: João Cerdeira, cerdeira@gmail.com. For the "TEDx AT&T" event, 289 submissions were filtered down to 14 presentations. Of the 14, mine is currently running number 1 in views, reference: Scott R. Morell, sm7837@att.com

Ellen Grove / Mike Bowler - Everything Is Better When We Stick Together: Building Team Working Agreements

schedule 3 years ago

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60 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

Whether a team is brand-new or seasoned veterans at working together, explicitly defining and/or refining a team working agreement will help the team to align on how they will work together effectively to meet their common goal. In this fast-paced hands-on session, participants will go through the process of building a team working agreement using LEGO Serious Play (LSP).

Creating a team working agreement helps team members set the stage for effective communication and high performance by making assumptions about ‘what really matters to us’ and ‘how we will work together?’ explicit and negotiable. Great working agreements address some difficult topics - what values do we share? how do we want to deal with conflict when it comes up? how will we handle problems within the team? - which are often challenging to discuss openly and honestly, especially when a team is first assembled.

This session will show you how to use LEGO Serious Play to encourage a frank and fearless discussion in order to kickstart these discussions so that a team can quickly create a powerful set of simple guiding principles for working together. Participants will learn about the importance of team working agreements in creating team cohesion and common understanding of shared values and operational guidelines, and experience hands-on how to use the LEGO Serious Play cycle of build-share-reflect to have a participatory discussion to identify shared values, explore reactions to conflict, and build a set of simple guiding principles.

Ellen Grove - Games for Learning about Conflict Resolution

schedule 3 years ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

Conflict isn’t inherently a bad thing – it’s inevitable when people are working closely together on things that they care about. In fact, diverging viewpoints can bring new insights to help teams move forward and create something new. Dealing with conflict head-on is challenging for many people, yet few teams spend time explicitly considering “how will we work together when things get rocky?” Teams need to build the skills to be able to navigate through rough times together and come out with win-win solutions.

This workshop will present useful models for considering team conflicts supported by games teams can use to develop and practice conflict resolution skills. The models address underlying drivers of conflict, modes for responding to conflict, assessing conflict severity to determine appropriate interventions, and the patterns of principled negotiation. The games build on the concepts to help participants gain insight and develop important skills in a non-intimidating and memorable way.

Ellen Grove - Lifting off: using play to build a better beginning

schedule 3 years ago

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180 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

Better teams create better outcomes. A liftoff (as described in the book Liftoff by Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies) at the outset of a new endeavour helps teams set the stage for betterness by cocreating a shared understanding of purpose, establishing alignment and understanding the context of the work they will do together. While the activities to include in a Lift Off will vary according to team and context, the practice of Agile Chartering - collaboratively developing a lightweight yet effective roadmap for the project and the team - is key to aligning and inspiring people to do better work together.

The purpose of an Agile Chartering workshop is to give all stakeholders of a project a voice and the opportunity to co-create a common understanding of the project dynamics, its purpose and context. It creates co-ownership of the project within the project team and thereby higher commitment to the project goals.

In this workshop, we will explore the objectives of Agile Chartering and foster a playful approach to doing this work. We'll talk about what kinds of games can be used to cocreate Purpose, Alignment and Context with a team, and run at least one game that can be used for each of the elements of an Agile Charter

schedule 3 years ago

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60 Mins

Demonstration

Beginner

Recently I had the privilege of interviewing several agile coach candidates in consideration to join my firm. Instead of spending all of our time asking typical interview questions about past activities coaching agile teams and helping organizations transform, we asked candidates if they would be willing to coach several volunteers through a quick game of Jenga so as to see how they would perform coaching members of a simulated team. The integration of game play into interviews for positions like agile coaches, ScrumMasters or any team member for that matter can provide valuable insights into prior experiences and assess communication abilities at a much greater level of fidelity than is yielded by typical interview questions. The benefits of using games within interviews for coaching positions are analogous to the benefits gained by using a pair-programming session to assess both the technical skills and communication skills of software developers on agile teams. Moreover, these valuable insights and the opportunity to experience how a coaching candidate would interact with actual team members was gained in just over 5 minutes.

Join us at AgileGames 2015 for a Jenga session where you’ll have an opportunity to experience game-based techniques for job interviews that will allow you to gather more precise information regarding candidates under consideration in less time. During this GameJam session, participants will work in groups of 3 or 4 to go through simulated coaching interviews. These interviews will be facilitated in a round-robin manner to allow participants to experience both what it is like to facilitate a game within a job interview as an interviewer, as well as provide an opportunity to experience what it is like to be interviewed using game-based techniques as an interviewee.

Tom Mellor - Origami Game V2

schedule 3 years ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

I originally presented this game at AG2012. Since then, I have updated and expanded it to include deeper concepts around Kanban and WIP, and have applied it to product creation and product ownership. The game is pretty simple: teams build a product system out of origami features/objects. However, the complexity between features adds uncertainty to the product development and teams have to contend with other imposed obstacles such as process for obtaining materials.

Also, teams learn how assumptions made deliberately or accidentally can inhibit the building of quality product in a timely manner. In the product owner variatiion, people form product owner committees that have to discern the desires and preferences of target customers through interviews and observations so that an MVP can be developed to at least recover costs and possibly realize a profit. "Customers" have the discretion of buying or passing on origami product that is also built by the product committee. So, the committee not only decides what product to build, but also builds the product.

I have used the game in its variations over 100 times with successful learning obtained through "ah ha" moments and debriefing. Planning, Daily Standup, Review and Retrospection are all covered in the simulation. A simulation talkes a minimum of 90 minutes and can be expanded to a half day. It is appropriate for people with beginning or intermediate knowledge. Variations of the game can be imagined and the game modified as desired. Materials needed are minimal with origami specfications available online or via Origami-A-Day calendars for about $14. Origami paper is necessary at a cost of about $8 for 300 sheets. Other materials needed include scissors, transparent tape, and Post-it type notes to create backlogs and kanban boards.